Newspapers / The Pilot (Southern Pines, … / May 3, 1962, edition 1 / Page 2
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0 Page TWO THE PILOT—Southern Pines, North Carolina THURSDAY, MAY 3, 1962 ■LOT Southern Pines ’" y y North Carolina “In taking over ^e Pilot no changes are contemplated. We will try to keep this * 80^ paper We will try to make a little money lor aU concerned. Wherever there seems to ^ an occasion to use our influence lor the public good we will try to do it. And we will treat everybody alike.”—James Boyd, May 1941. Change in Attitude on Spraying? We may be over-optimistic in thinking that we detect on the part of the public more sympathy with this newspaper s opposition to the municipal summer in sect spraying program. If opposition to the program is increasing, we hope that persons disliking it will make their opin ions known to the town council and to The Pilot. We have opposed the spraying program since it began several years ago, because: 1. It is inconceivable that breathing a fine mist of fuel oil and insecticide (a mist that often lingers in the air for hours on a calm night) has no deleterious effect on the human body, particularly on infants and older persons—and indeed we know of specific cases of persons with respira tory afflictions in which the spray has caused definite, unfavorable reactions. 2. Regardless of a possible health threat, it is highly objectionable to have the sweet summer night air (which we in this pleasant little town are so lucky to be able to breathe, unpolluted by industrial and other smoke and fumes) deliberately made offensive in odor and consistency by the clouds of spray belched forth from a loudly chugging, sputtering machine that itself violates the peace and quiet of the community. 3. We do not think that a unit of gov ernment has the right to befoul the air which all persons must breathe. It has been established, we believe, that a municipal government has the right to add chlorine or fluorine to its water sup ply, but no citizen is forced to drink the water. There is no alternative, however, to breathing air. We don’t know enough law to expatiate on this point, but we reel that the Town is morally, if not legally, violating a basic human right with its spraying program. So serious on a national scale has be come the problem of air and water pollu tion, use of agricultural chemicals, nu clear fall-out, food additives and chemical and health hazards in various occupations that a federal Environmental Health Center, in or near Washington, has been proposed to do research in these fields. Little is actually known, for instance, about the long-term effect of insecticides on the human body, as many of the sub stances have not been in use long enough for full studies to be made. Some of these chemicals are not disposed of, but are stored, by the body. In his Health Message, in February, President Kennedy supported the En vironmental Health Center proposal and a request for funds for it has been sub mitted as part of the new federal budget. Certainly, the project reflects growing national concern with hazards to human health and life that were almost unknown a decade or two ago. Perhaps it is some of this concern that is reflected in the change we think we are noting in public attitude to town-wide insect spraying. Watch Out for Fires Here’s one time when the stint of writ ing an editorial on Monday that won’t be read until Thursday isn’t such a perilous affair. This time the editor doesn’t need to hope wistfully that the subject won’t be a dead dormouse by the time Pilot readers get to it. In fact, this tirrie he’s hoping just the opposite. If it turns out that this editorial was an unnecessary effort, so much the better. In other words, on Monday we find our selves still saying: “Watch out for fires!” The woods are dry as tinder. A cliche but expressive. The word holds all the fearful crackling danger of what it means. “Tinder” is seldom used today except in just this connection. The dictionary says it’s from the Anglo Saxon, meaning some thing that will set things afire without an explosion. (And the dictionary ex plains primly that this was before the time of lucifer matches.) Those Anglo Saxons obviously didn’t know anything about Southern pine- woods. Whoever has heard the snap and crash of fire hitting a big pine will never forget the sound. Or the sight. The huge tree bursts, explodes; there’s no other word for it. It becomes in seconds a great roaring torch against the sky. Several score years back, the owners of woodlands would “burn over” as pro tection against fire, but that practice is seldom carried out today. Though it did offer much protection to the forests, it killed the tiny seedlings. Now the orga nised Forestry Service, with its fire fighters and trucks equipped with the latest things in tanks and fireplows, and their watchers constantly aloft on the towers scattered at points of vantage, form the defenders of the forests. And extremely efficient and able they are. And extremely effective. Today there is double emphasis in the warning spread far and wide by these watchmen on the firing line. “Watch out for fires! Be careful in the woods: don’t build fires, don’t throw cigarettes care lessly; don’t put out trash to burn! BE CAREFUL!” To this we would add the caution: If you see a fire starting, or smoke on the horizon, get on the phone to the fire tower immediately. The number is 692- 7951, and it’s the first listing in the Ns: N. C. Forest Service Fire Tower. And may we add the fervent if cau tious hope that the drought will break and this editorial be out-of-date by the time it’s read. V., Doctors Not United Against Care Plan There must have been considerable gnashing of teeth around the headquar ters of the American Medical Association when Dr. Bdnjamin Spock, renowned physician who is the author of “Baby and Child Care” and who is beloved by mil lions of parents for his sensible advice, came out with an unqualified endorse ment of President Kennedy’s plan for health insurance of the aged through Social Security. Dr. Spock did not merely condescend to speak a few favorable words for the plan embodied in the King-Anderson Bill now in Congressional Committees. He wrote three newspaper features which have been distributed nationally by the National Council of Senior Citizens for Health Care Through Social Security, pointing out how valuable the President’s health insurance plan would be for secur ity of the whole family, as well as for the aged, and stating emphatically that the plan is not “socialized medicine,” per mits free choice of physicians or facilities by the patient and imposes no Federal supervision or control on the practice of medicine by any doctor. The connection between health care for the aged and children of this country is “very close,” says Dr. Spock. The Social Security plan he states, “is needed almost as much for ti:e benefit of children and parents as it is for the grandparents for whom it is directly intended.” Dr. Spock says he has seen in homes the financial and emotional strains, af fecting children as well as parents, that result when parents have to assume the burden of medical care for their own parents, perhaps having to use education al funds saved for the children or having to postpone medical treatment needed for them. Or perhaps homes must be mort gaged or savings exhausted. Children’s opportunities, savs Dr. Spock, should not be sacrificed because of crises which can easilv be insured against. Though the American Medical Associ ation would have it anpear that it sneaks unanimoiislv for all the phvsicians in the nation, this is by no means the case. Dr. Register! ^'Tliey Sent Us To Guard Your Goldfislir Grains of Sand 0 oo House TAK "But. . . no rain!" Maybe it will come before this paper is read, and for once that will be all right with us. Mind, now: we aren’t groaning any prophetic groans about the drought. We don’t say that when the paper comes out on Thurs day it will be just as dry, or dry er, than it is today. Manfully, we keep on hoping it WON’T be. Biut we hope it in a whisper. No use tempting providence, though why providence should be brought into such things is not for us to say. Which reminds us of a story told by Ralph Page about the time when he was asked to make a prayer in one of the little coun try churches. Nothing phased Ralph then, (as nothing phases him now!) and he cast his mind about for a suitable subject. This was a farming com munity: Of course! Pray for rain: the farmer always wants rain. So Ralph Page delivered an earnest plea for rain. After the service a farmer came up to him. He was friendly, if cautious. ‘■We were right glad to have you with us, Mr. Page,” he said. “That was a mighty good prayer, too,” then there came a pause. “ ‘Course,” said the farmer, “What we really need’s manure.” SOVIET BOMB TESTS SHOW WEAKNESS Loss in Russian Power Noted By JOSEPH C. HARSCH Special Correspondent Christian Science Monitor (Reprinted with permission) Spock is only one of numerous distin guished. doctors who have formed the Physicians Committee for the Health Care of the Aged through Social Security. The AMA, with vast sums of money at its disposal (it spent $163,405 for lobbyirig last year, more than any other group in the nation) is going all-out against the King-Anderson Bill—an opposition that seems as inexplicable and as fanatical as were the AMA’s unsuccessful attacks on voluntary plans for health insurance in 1934, the Social Security plan itself in 1939, extension of Social Security benefits to the permanently and totally disabled at age 50, and old-age and unemployment insurance. It is gratifying to find that a more rea sonable pKiint of view prevails among some physicians outside the leadership of the AMA. ... It is assumed, that almost immediately (following the first U. S. post nuclear-test-truce series of testing) the Soviets will com mence their second post truce series of tests. It ik probable,''althou.gh not en tirely certain, that this new round in tests never would have taken place had the Soviets continued to observe the truce. The most reliabk evidence is that it has taken Washington five months to prepare for the forthcoming round of rival tests. The answer is, I believe, fairly clear. It is be cause the past 10 months have witnessed a contraction or dimin ishing of th.3 over-all power of the Soviet state which has alarm ed many persons in Moscow and which they think can be remedied most quickly by an attempt to score a breakthrough in nuclear weapons. At the time Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev met Presi dent Kennedy in Vienna roughly a year ago the Soviet Union ap peared to be at the zenith of its power position in the world. Its doctrines and its agents were or appeared to be making headway across Africa and Latin America. Chaos in the Congo and Premier Fidel Castro in Cuba were merely the most alarming immediate indications that Mos cow was on the march. Its threat to Berlin had the Western alliance in an anguish of conflicting opinion and uncertain ty about the future. It was believed to have the capacity to drop enough nuclear weapons on the United States to constitute as deterrent an effect as the number which the United States could drop on the Soviet Union. Its system of alliances was known to have been shaken by the gnawing ideological dispute with Peking, although Western experts assumed that the issue was manageable and would be contained within the structure of an .effective Communist alliance. There was no general aware ness in the West of a major do mestic issue in the Soviet Union over agricultural policy. Mr. Khrushchev was known to be having food problems, but they were hardly regarded as a serious weakness in his position. Over the past 10 months this picture has been substantially altered. . The West learned that Soviet nuclear capacity had been over estimated; that, in fact, American nuclear capacity substantially outgunned Soviet capacity. The whole Western world learned that the agricultural problem had mushroomed into a r^ajor domestic crisis inside the Soviet Union. At the same time the West concluded that the Sov- iet-Chinese dispute had been as much underestimated as Soviet nuctear capacity had been over estimated. Since then the march on Soviet influence in Africa and Latin America has slowed down, in fact has begun to recede, and even the building of the wall in Berlin be gan to appear to partake more of the nature of a desperate defen sive action to check the melting of imperial frontiers than that of a genuine imperial offensive. When the power of a great state is seen to be shrinking in so many areas and the shadow cast by its power to be recessive, that state is likely to seek some bold and sudden means of reviv ing its diminishing influence. The tide could be reversed, of course, by a spectacular breakthrough in nuclear weapons. The above is, I believe, the reason why Moscow broke the truce and why it is preparing an other round. Under the circum stances it is difficult to see how Washington can avoid its own testing. It is ironic that this step, so much deprecated by so many, is the product not of rising Soviet strength but of the appearance of Soviet weakness. Cile Turner's Latest Cile Turner is not one to neglect the fundamentals. The song she is working up now has for its punch line: “Toujours manure.” The idea came to her from a terrible experience. It appears there was a big garden club tom- planned for a certain day and the idea was to get everything fur bished up for the occasion. A friend with a particularly cher ished lawn got busy way ahead of th.e date prodding the local yardman to get the fertilizer start ed early; the lawn was looking a bit yellow and she wanted it su per perfect for the tour. Time went by and time went by and, in the mann.3r of yardmen, nothing happened. She realized her lawn was going to have to make do and thought no more of it. On the day of the tour the lady went marketing early so as to get back to receive the hordes of visitors who always came. As she started back and turned into the drive a wave of horror assail ed her nostrils. It grew stronger as she neared the house and the truth burst upon her. The yard man had at last showed up—and how. Her lawn, the pride of the place, was covered with manure. Cile’s song isn’t entirely de voted to the gloom of this catas trophe: true to her philosophy of implacable optimism—as well as her belief in “old-time religion,” whether it’s gardening religion or any other kind—she gives old- time manure it’s due. In garden ing, she says, if all else^ fails, there’s “toujours manure.” The Public Speaking Nation Watching Sth's 'Battle of Ideologies' To the Editor: I see by the papers that the eyes of the Winston-Salem Journal, and of old Lindsay Warren 300 miles away, and in fact of the na tion in general all the way up to the White House, are on the Eighth District Congressional race. The .election has all the drama any scenario writer could hope to contrive. Can a glamor ous challenger for the first time in American history dethrone two incumbents in one race? Can the South’s one really entrenched Republican be beaten? Is the present-day rightist resurgence virulent enough to put across a bedrock, arch-conservative Dem ocrat against such omnipotent opponents? In this limelight, the Eighth owes it to the nation to give them this fall a clearcut battle of ideologies — dedicated conserva tive Charlte Jonas against dedi cated indgpend.ant thinker John P. Kennedy instead of a mere lukewarm personality tiff over which of the two rockribbed con servatives (Jonas and Kitchin) can shake the most hands. H. MILTON SHORT, JR. Charlotte With Moore County’s new registration of all voters due to end in 10 days, two thirds of the month allowed for it has passed. But many hundreds of the coun ty’s voters have not yet re-registered. While there are few county Democra tic primary races to rouse interest, there should be no apathy about the voting May 26. There are two races for highly important seats on the county board of education and the Congressional primary is of utmost importance, determining the quality of leadership that will affect not only Moore County, but the Congressional district, the state and the nation. There is, of course, no such thing as an unimportant election. Some elections may be considered more “important” than others because of the number of races or the nature of the office involved, but the principle remains the same. Citizen in terest in voting is, literally, the life force of democracy, the vitality of a free nation. An apathetic electorate is a nation’s illness—an illness that has been fatal to democracy in more than one country of the world. JONATHAN DANIELS LAYS IT ON THE LINE States’ Wrongs “If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, “the law is a ass.” Never recently has that been given better demonstration toan by the suppositions or pretensions of some Southern Senators that^ the Constitutional rights of Amer icans would be invaded if Con gress held that in Federal elec tions the completion of a sixth grade education should serve as adequate demonstration of liter acy as a prerequisite to voting. Obviously what these Senators are defending are not states’ rights but states’ wrongs. And in that process they are energetical ly engaged in trying to prove to the country that the South does not want to protect or see protect ed the rights of all literate citi zens to vote in national elections. If any persons. Southern Sena tors included, really feel that pre cinct poll holders are better qual ified to judge literacy than the school teachers of the South, then they hold a mighty poor opinion of the schools of the South. Of course, the truth is that these Senators are not defending a principle. They are only talking of principle—even invoking “the ark of the covenant”—to defend a devious and improper practice by which in some states literacy tests have been set up as slick tricks to defeat the evident pur pose of the Constitution that this shall be a nation of the people— and all the people. Phony, discriminatory “literacy tests” are not Constitutional. They are corrupt. And the South is not served by dramatizing a defense of corruption in the Sen ate or anywhere else. —Raleigh News & Observer 'Communist Thinking' To the Editor: This is the first day of our first visit to Pinehurst. Having pur chased your paper and viewing the leftist bent of your cartoon of the D.A.R. and Birchites and hav ing read your editorial disparag ing “flag waving” and those who “denounce communism,” plus your editorial recommending no “testing,” I have come to the con clusion that the inroads of com munist thinking abound down here in Dixie, so help me! 'The New York Times. I. H. SCHAUMBER Pinehurst (Editor’s note: The Pilot thanks its new reader for his comparison of this newspaper with The New York Times.) Signs of Summer More “Live Bait” signs hung out here and there. . . and some times in zones where they hadn’t ought to be. More folks crouched over fish ing poles along the creeks and by the farm ponds. Telephone calls that bring the harrassed answer: "‘Can’t do it. I’m putting away winter clothes.” (And the attic alr.9ady so hot you can’t breathe.) Birdbaths, those drinking-and- bathing combos, emptied almost before you get them filled. Such a wild flutter of wings you’d think they’d all drown. But the best sign of summer isn’t a sign at all but a sound: The first descending “chuck- chuck-chucky-chucky-chucky” of the summer cardinal tuned in with the first fluting arpeggios of the woodthrush on the next branch. That’s a duet worth wait ing for. The PILOT Published Every Thursday by THE PILOT, Incorporated Southern Pines, North Carolina- 1941—JAMES BOYD—1944 Katharine Boyd Editor ■ C. Benedict Associate Editor- Dan S. Ray Gen. Mgr. C. G. Council Advertising • Mary Scott Newton Business. Mary Evelyn de Nissoff Society Composing Room Dixie B. Ray, Michael Valen, Thomas Mattocks, J. E. Pate, Sr., Charles Weatherspoon and John E. Lewis. PRODUCERS He Who by any exertion of mind or body adds to the aggregate of enjoyable wealth, increases the sum of human knowledge or gives to human life higher elevation or greater fullness—-he is, in the larger meaning of the words, a producer, a workingman, a labor er, and is honestly earning hon est wages. —HENRY GEORGE Subscription Rales Moore County One Year $4.00 Outside Moore County . One Year $5.00 Second-class Postage paid at Southern Pines, N. C. Member National Editorial Assn, and N. C. Press Assn.
The Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.)
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May 3, 1962, edition 1
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